Wilhelm Leopold Colmar von der Goltz Quotes

Every time that we've ever fought, we fought to keep from bein' destroyed. We've never started a war.

I have desired as sincerely as any man—I sometimes think more than any other man—that our present difficulties might be settled without the shedding of blood.

To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.

I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.

The alternative is not war or doing nothing. Whoever rejects war is not doomed to appeasement.

To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill

We advised them to do what they think proper against the war.

Number one, that it is smart to communicate and negotiate with your enemy instead of just waging war with bombs and weapons of mass destruction.

But I feel convinced, and I venture even to prophesy in this regard, that the time will come when there will also be a minister of peace in the cabinet, seated beside the ministers of war.

If I could cause world peace by taking someone out to lunch, I'd go, 'Well, war isn't that terrible.'

War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.

We should wage war not to win war, but to win peace.

In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

The main force used in the evolving world of humanity has hitherto been applied in the form of war.

No doubt it requires two to fight. But both of them need not necessarily be fighters. It is, all the same, a fight, even if one goes on beating and the other gets beaten. There is no guarantee that others would behave properly with us even if we remain peaceful and cordial with them.

In this age there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war. We must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint.

I am not—as I am sure I will be charged—for peace at any price, but for an honorable rational, and political solution to this [the Vietnam] war.

There is never any military solution to any problem. Even when you have total victory you still have to go in and talk to people.

All States do not have the same interests, but are there any interests which cannot be infinitely better reconciled before than after a war?

To win the War, to overcome the enemy upon the fields cannot alone ensure the Victory in Peace. The cause of War must be removed. Each Nation's rights must be secure from violation. Above all, from the human mind must be erased all thoughts of War as a solution. Then and then only will War cease.

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.